


all the tigers have been out

by girlsarewolves



Series: we are made of star stuff [2]
Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, I don't think the movies completely contradict each other tbh, Implied/Referenced Character Death, POV Second Person, Survivor Guilt, Time Skips, brief mentions or vague allusions of other characters, but each one gives a slightly altered impression, canon established death only though, leaning slightly more towards BvS, my attempt at reconciling the time between Wonder Woman and BvS and JL, so here I am looking for that place where they all connect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 06:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12811518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: It's easy to believe in love when you haven't tasted sorrow or hate. Faith is always easy when untested.(But you can always pick yourself back up if you stumble.)





	all the tigers have been out

**Author's Note:**

> Just a random idea I got after rewatching Wonder Woman post seeing Justice League, and thinking about how each movie so far featuring Diana seems to have a slightly different take on what she did post WW. I don't necessarily think they're incompatible, but I do think they give different impressions? And JL was trying to bridge it? But this is my little attempt at reconciling Diana of WW with Diana of BvS with Diana of JL, leaning more towards BvS - which, I think I wound up kind of influenced by a line and theme of Angel the series, ironically? If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. It just takes a lot for that lesson to really sink into Diana, imo, and I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THAT, but maybe I'll try to put them into another fic (since I couldn't quite work them in here). Now I'll shut up. XD

* * *

 

You are a warrior. There will always be blood on your hands.

 

* * *

  
  
When you are a child, still young and new and see only fighting when it has no true ending, you want nothing more than to be a warrior like your sisters, like your aunt Antiope - like your mother.  
  
You want to be better. The best. You want this as a child who wants to outshine her elders and peers for the satisfaction of it and the pride of your family - for them to look on you and say, 'Yes, Diana. You are fierce. I am so proud. You do not need my protection.'  
  
When you are older, much older, but still so new and have yet to see fighting when it has that gruesome ending, you learn. You learn that even when you do not need protection, that will never stop those who love you from doing so. When you learn you do not need protection, but can be the protector, you taste a more bitter failure than any lessons taught with blood and sand and bruises that heal faster than your sisters', your aunt's - your mother's.  
  
When you see the bodies of those who thanked you and called your hero, you know why Antiope stopped the bullet. You think you can feel it, though, in your gut, digging its way deep into the very center of you and sticking there like a poison.  
  
You think, 'Nothing could be worse than this,' even as you know it will get worse if you do nothing.  
  
So you do something. You do all you can. It's not enough - it will never be enough. And it always gets worse. There are more bodies surrounding you, friends and lovers and enemies and strangers who looked at you and called you hero, savior.  
  
There is blood on your hands. It never goes away. It's never enough.

 

* * *

  
  
You tried doing something. You tried doing everything. It sticks in your gut, that bullet, that poison - and you try doing nothing, but that never lasts. So you trying doing little, doing as next to nothing as your conscience allows.  
  
There is always blood on your hands, even when you cannot bring yourself to kill those who live only to harm - you remember the body of a man who was nothing but that, an evil and awful man, and everything that his death did not fix - but you can't stop.  
  
There will be blood on yours hands if you do nothing. More bodies filling up the empty spaces of your memory.  
  
Not that you can ever truly stop that from happening. Whether war or misfortune or time, one by one those you let in, those you briefly pass, those you stop - they pass by and leave you with another loss, another tombstone, another memorial. You feel as though your heart and memory have become cemeteries.  
  
That bullet burns in you, poison bitter in your veins, and you feel yourself closing off, bit by bit. You still try, you still do something - just enough that it's not nothing.  
  
You are a demi-goddess, and there will always be blood on your hands.

 

* * *

  
  
You move through time like an observer. You play the part of each lifetime, adjusting enough to fits with the times - you are Diana Prince in England first, then American, then in Mexico, in Japan. You are now Diana Prince in France, and each one feels like a hollower version of the last.  
  
There is blood on your hands and poison in your veins - a graveyard for a heart. You believed in love once. You tell yourself you still do. You tell yourself you always will, but it seems to echo through the empty chambers you inhabit, growing fainter and fainter like a mockery.  
  
You are an amazon, and there will always be blood on your hands.  
  
A bullet in your gut stings, and the pain flares, and you remember as you walk the halls of decaying monuments that you are trying to save, that you are alone. You are an amazon - but cut off from your sisters, your mother. You are a demi-goddess - but you killed the last of the gods.  
  
You are a woman, but your heart is a crowded memorial of those you've loved, overflowing, no room for more.  
  
Then come the Kryptonians.  
  
Then comes the Superman.

 

* * *

  
  
It is the first time you feel as though you are part of this world again, not just a wanderer lost and only able to watch everyone live around you. You feel the bullet, the poison - you feel the rush of the fight and that want, like when you were young and new, to be fierce and to protect.  
  
But you do nothing. You are an ocean away, and by the time you swallow down the poison and start to embrace the fire you'd thought had died, it is over.  
  
Thousands are dead. Their blood on your hands.  
  
You tell yourself you could do nothing to stop it; you could do nothing. You know that is a lie - and it hits you like a bullet, digging its way deep, to the very center of you and replacing the one before it. Bitterness is replaced by guilt, an unwelcome emotion that you tried so hard to banish with the tears of those you failed when you were too young and too new.  
  
Guilt is not enough though. You tell yourself you believe in love - but you know the difference between belief and hollow words.  
  
No matter how much or how little you do, there will always be blood on your hands.  
  
So why bother?  
  
You wonder if there truly is an afterlife, a place where even gods go when they die. You wonder if they can see the world of man from there. You wonder if Ares can see you - and if your brother laughs at how weary you have already become.

 

* * *

  
  
When the ghost of a rumor reaches you that Alexander Luthor Jr. now has a rare photograph - one believed to be a myth - added to his collection, you feel it, that stirring of something stronger than guilt.  
  
You chase after that ghost - and your graveyard of a heart aches, and the memorials that take up all the empty spaces in your memory mock you for this, for doing something so selfish when you've done hardly anything selfless in so long.  
  
There will always be blood on your hands. You know this, because you are a warrior - an Amazon - a demi-goddess. These are beings that cannot live and die without blood on their hands and cemeteries for hearts. You have learned to accept this, like a bullet you can't dig out.  
  
You chase after this ghost - maybe some part of you is hoping that you'll find yourself with it.

 

* * *

  
  
When you see it plastered on every screen, the creature - the thing that cannot be but is, giant and looming like the old gods, monstrous like nothing you've seen before - you know. You tell yourself - 'I'm going home,' you tell yourself, 'I will find my home and my mother, and I will tell her she was right.' But you know.  
  
You have tried doing nothing - doing something, doing everything, doing next to nothing - and it doesn't matter. There will always be blood on your hands. So you take your bags and you walk towards the fight.  
  
The weight of your true self is heavy in your bags. You realize maybe you've found what you came for after all.

 

* * *

  
  
When Superman dies, and that poison that still lingers in your veins whispers that your efforts were all for nothing, you can finally put a name to it as you watch the other woman weep.  
  
Grief.  
  
You said you believed in love, and you did, but you let grief have its way with you - you let it wring you dry of your love, you let it leave you hollow and empty, a crumbling memorial to those you let in and those you never gave the chance to.  
  
There will always be blood on your hands.  
  
So all you can do, is everything you can.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from 'To Be Human' from the Wonder Woman soundtrack. That particular verse always felt, to me, like it was saying 'everything hurts more than I thought it would, and I kind of want it all to just stop.' (Course, I always heard it as 'all the tigers have me now' lol.)
> 
> Feedback is appreciated! :)


End file.
